Rick Scott – NET WORTH $85 million (down from a reported $250 million in 2010 after he spent $75 million of his own money on his 2010 campaign for FL governor and since it’s rumored he’ll spend $100 million of his own money for the 2014 election . . . puzzling numbers but then I was never very good at math.)

The latest meme in Perpetual Outrage Land has former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman practically living in the Oval Office. It’s a scandal ya’ see – and a perfect example of how to gin up outrage over the thinnest bit of information.

Bill O’Reilly: “You must explain under oath what you were doing at the White House on 157 separate occasions.”

The Daily Caller: “IRS’s Shulman had more public White House visits than any Cabinet member.”

Brit Hume tweeeted: “Sooner or later this

will have to be answered. What was the ex-IRS chief doing at the White House all those times?” (Ahem, answered by whom Brit? Does FOX News not have any reporters?)

Did. Not. Happen. An actual reporter went and actually reported the charge and it turned out that it Did. Not. Happen.

First, she explains how visitors logs work, what they mean and how they very often only mean that a name is ‘precleared’ for a meeting or event, even if the person never attended. And, she informs us, ‘White House’ usually means either the Eisenhower Executive Office Building or the New Executive Office Building (17 blocks away). And then, doing the ‘reporting’ thing, she look things up and gets into the weeds.

Here’s a taste. This is just 2010 (the other years are at the link); this is the year of the bi-weekly health reform deputies meetings, i.e. regularly scheduled working meetings.

2010

Eisenhower Executive Office Building, recorded as Old Executive Office Building

Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the Office for Health Reform

Sarah Fenn, staff assistant, working with DeParle

Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget

Robert Nabors, deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget

Jeffrey Zients, deputy director for Management at the Office of Management and Budget

Margaret Weiss, again

Ezekiel Emanuel, special adviser to the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget for health policy, detailed from his post at the National Institutes of Health

Michael Hash, again

Ariel Levin, special assistant at the Office of Management and Budget. One of her recurring meetings gets the description “THIS IS FOR THE BI-WEEKLY HEALTH REFORM DEPUTIES MEETING.”

Alex Hornbrook

New Executive Office Building

Terri Payne, Office of Management and Budget

(actual) White House (but not Oval Office)

Jason Furman, again

Chelsea Kammerer, White House special assistant to the director of intergovernmental affairs. Shulman signed in to attend a July 22 West Wing bill signing for the “Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act” in the State Room of the White House along with White House staff and at least 81 people from outside the building. You can watch Obama deliver remarks on it in this video; the law created “measures that hold government accountable for responsible use of taxpayer dollars and cut down on waste, fraud and abuse.”

Nancy-Ann DeParle, again

I’m not seeing much this morning – perhaps someone inside the right-wing noise machine (so named by Eric Alterman?) read her story and send out a memo to find a new narrative for this week.

Something old becomes new because a few days ago FOX & Friends found out about it, or more accurately, found out about a little part of it, and that was all they needed to sputter into outrage, along with the entire right-wing noise machine – especially since the word Jesus was uttered without the genuflect.

We all know how this goes: it’s a tiresome formula – raise the noise level sufficiently to feed the audience and they’ll keep coming back.

Here’s the story from a column by Frank Cerabino at The Palm Beach Post (he’s a favorite read for me):

An adjunct professor at FAU teaching an intercultural communications class was following a textbook exercise that called for students to write the word “Jesus” on a piece of paper and instructing them to step on the paper.

“Most will hesitate,” the handbook says. “Ask why they can’t step on the paper. Discuss the importance of symbols in culture.”

One student objected to the voluntary classroom exercise, and made a complaint to the news media, saying his professor told him to “stomp on Jesus” and that he was suspended from class for his refusal to participate. . .

In fact, the student was suspended for threatening the Professor.

. . . [the instructor] was following an exercise written by a professor at a Catholic college in Wisconsin, an exercise that has been used for 10 years in colleges without incident . . . the exercise was designed to be an affirmation of faith and a recognition of the emotional power that disrespect of religion carries — a way for students to understand the strong reactions other cultures have to disrespect for their own religion.

Our 30% Governor said that “the professor’s lesson was offensive, and even intolerant, to Christians and those of all faiths who deserve to be respected as Americans entitled to religious freedom.” Which was the very point of the classroom exercise. But no matter.

He even offered an apology to the student and called for an investigation.

Maybe before our indicted-for-Medicare-fraud-former-hospital-executvive governor cranks up the old investigation machine, he might look at saving the taxpayers a few bucks – he could just read a full news account. But that wouldn’t get him into the middle of the story.

Back at FOX Mike Huckabee came forth with my favorite comment: “People wonder what’s wrong with higher education, This is what’s wrong with higher education.” Right there is a good argument to stop the dangerous teaching of Engineering or the Classics. Of course had he paid more attention when he was pursing his own higher education, he might have been inspired to learn the whole story.

From Crooked Timber: Eric Loomis, a blogger at Lawyers, Guns and Money is in the crosshairs – he has landed on an intertubes hit list, where Glenn Reynolds, the genuinely frightening Michelle Malkin, Town Hall, The Daily Caller and only Elvis knows who else have not only climbed aboard the tired outrage train, but are actually charging him with ‘eliminationist’ rhetoric. First, here’s what he said on Twitter:

“I was heartbroken in the first 20 mass murders. Now I want Wayne LaPierre’s head on a stick.”

Pretty threatening, eh? But metaphors be damned, these folk know a genuine threat of violence when they see one.

Back to Crooked Timber:

[the first shot came from] right-wing blogger Glenn Reynolds [who] earlier voiced his anger over the State Department’s lax provision of security in Benghazi by demanding, “Can we see some heads roll?” . . . other conservative voices have joined in. The Daily Caller saysLoomis “. . . tweets demanding death for National Rifle Association executive Wayne LaPierre.” . . . And just this morning, Michelle Malkin wrote at National Review Online: “So, it’s come to this: Advocating beheadings, beatings . . . Blood-lusting hate speech must not get a pass . . .”

. . . might we hope that his listeners run out of patience? His latest:

Rush Limbaugh, while repeatedly insisting he is “not alleging a conspiracy,” suggested Monday that the National Hurricane Center’s forecast models for Tropical Storm Isaac were altered to help President Barack Obama and “cast a pall” over the Republican National Convention.

“I’m not alleging conspiracies here. The Hurricane Center is the regime; the Hurricane Center is the Commerce Department,” Limbaugh said on his talk show. “It’s the government. It’s Obama.”

In what may be the most breathtaking turn-it-on-its -head moment in political rhetoric, Rush Limbaugh on Wednesday claimed that the Obama campaign and all Democrats and all the pollsters and all the media are conspiring to suppress the Republican vote.

Here’s how it works. Diabolical pollsters ask questions in a dishonest fashion designed to show Obama leading. The media publish and pushes that narrative. The campaign seizes upon this (of course they’re actually behind it but that’s hidden behind an impenetrable veil of secrecy financed by George Soros and Warren Buffet) and it gloats. All of this combines to discourage Romney voters who are made to think there’s just no point in voting since Obama is sure to win.

Will the Rev. Sun Young Moon pull the plug on his hobby, or will the ‘venerable‘ Washington Times continue its vigorous reporting for another day? (NOTE: Washington Times daily circulation about 83,000; Washington Post daily circulation about one million.)

This story from that paper yesterday leaped into the conservative blogsphere, where vigorous re-blogging was soon underway.

The pro-choice Obama White House requires pregnant visitors to count their unborn child as a person for tours of the executive mansion.

Okay. Family of three wants to tour the WH when they make their future planned visit to DC. Now if they reasonably expect that they will be a family of four by the time they arrive, and since everyone is required to be ticketed, they are advised to apply for four tickets now and save any hassle when they get there. Let them know how many you will be.

Got it? White House policy is that everyone, no matter the age, is required to have a ticket. Four of you want to enter? That’ll be four tickets. Expecting twins before the date of the tour? Better order five tickets now. Like if you were going to Disney.

It devolves further: Now eating their own as Michelle Malkin calls Ann Coulter delusional. Wheeeeee!

Coulter is under the continued delusion that Sarah Palin was the problem with the 2008 ticket and not McCain. Later in the show, when Van Jones floated former Bush Secretary of State Condoleezza Rices name for VP, Coulter snorted again: “Too much like Palin.”

Say what?

Like her love object Chris Christie, Coulter has been taking many open shots at Palin lately.

There’s really nothing that doesn’t outrage certain elements of the right wing noise machine. Here’s a screen grab from memorandum today. If you’re not familiar with this particular website, it provides a running aggregation of political news. Note the media sites that listed (“Discussion”) who’ve seized on this newest manufactured scandal:

Apparently the presence of Johnny Depp and Tim Burton is the reason for angst. Politico provides context:

“This was an event for local school children from the Washington DC area and for hundreds of military families. If we wanted this event to be a secret, we probably wouldn’t have invited the press corps to cover it, release photos of it to Flickr, or post a video from it on the White House website,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz said in a statement. “Even Johnny Depp’s fans knew about it and posted on their website. . . .

The official White House social media releases and the reporter pool dispatches from the party do not mention either Burton or Depp, but the Depp fan site JohnnyDeppNews.com reported that the actor was in attendance with Burton. And the Nashville Tennessean also reported that both Depp and Burton were at the White House for the party. Then-White House press secretary Robert Gibbs addressed the event in his briefing, but did not go into any detail.

This is taken from a radio program segment from way back in March 2001. It’s the somewhat famous Beck program in which he screams at a woman caller ‘bitch, get the hell off my program’. But the rest is new to me – the part in which he launches his little ‘people I’d like to kill with a shovel’ segment. (It’s short.)

Michael Kinsley asks a good question at Politico. Since talk radio et al are insisting that the only cause of the shooting in Tucson was insanity . . . what will they be saying when his lawyers plead insanity? Which they will of course. Or – horror of horrors – when the guy is deemed unable to stand trial?

Memories. It’s January 2009 and Nancy Pelosi is being installed as Speaker of the House. She smiles a lot, brings her 14 grandchildren to the speaker’s dais, uses the large gavel that was used when passing the Civil Rights Act in ’64 and calls the 111th Congress to order.

But she is a San Francisco liberal you know. So the Limbaugh-of-the-scorn and his wanna be’s, along with the Sean-of the outrages put their machines into gear. She is to be mocked. Too smiley! What’s that stunt with the kids? She talked about a milestone for women – playing the victim again: damn those women! And she’s pushing it with that gavel!

Forward to yesterday: John Boehner becomes speaker; he stands beside Pelosi and he cries – on camera, in front of the Congress. He took his even larger gavel and called the 112th congress into action. And the right wing noise machine saw a good thing. And they moved on.

You know that old “Canadians come to the US for health care because ours is so excellent and they can’t get a face transplant in Ottawa” trope? That one? We hear it all the time; it’s practically a Republican talking point; it’s certainly a talk radio/FOX News talking point.

The author says: “Look, I’m not denying that some people with means might come to the United States for care. If I needed a heart/lung transplant, there’s no place I’d rather be. But for the vast, vast majority of people, that’s not happening. You shouldn’t use the anecdote to describe things at a population level. This study showed you three different methodologies, all with solid rationales behind them, all showing that this meme is mostly apocryphal.”